Coroner highlights traumatic suicides of patients excluded from VAD scheme
They include a patient who ended his life by inflicting a knife wound to his leg.
A coroner is calling for a review of voluntary assisted dying laws after an elderly man, who was excluded from the scheme because he was not terminally ill, killed himself using a knife.
Geoffrey McConachy’s bloodied body was found by his son and a family friend in the bedroom of his house after he had inflicted a 6cm knife wound to his right leg.
Victorian State Coroner Simon McGregor said the 82-year-old had expressed a desire for voluntary assisted dying (VAD) following a stroke, which affected his speech and contributed to serious depression.
He had asked one of his sons to procure information about VAD in Victoria and Switzerland, where one of his sons lived, and openly spoke about suicide with both of them.
